I have wanted to watch Stupeur et tremblements since I saw a little snippet of it in the documentary Amélie Nothomb, une vie entre deux eaux, at the 2012 Festival of Film on Art. Imagine my joy to find it in the schedule of the Cinémathèque Québécoise.

Amélie Nothomb is a quirky and prolific Belgian writer. Most of her novels have an autobiographical aspect.
She was born in Japan and spent the first five years of her life there. (Her parents were in Belgium’s diplomatic service.)
After Japan, the family moved to China, which Nothomb did not like at all. She did not live in Belgium until she was in her late teens.

Nothomb’s memories of her days in Japan were so idyllic that she dreamed of returning to that country. She felt that she was Japanese, in fact. She managed to get a one-year contract at a huge company in Tokyo.
Unfortunately, it was not all lollipops and Hello Kitty after that.

Poor Amélie commits one faux pas after another. Efforts to apologize or explain only make things worse. Sometimes it seems that she just can’t shut up – it’s like she’s fallen into some kind of trance of stupidity.

She had taken lessons to upgrade her understanding of the Japanese language but there’s no indication that she had studied the intricacies of behaviour and hierarchy in the business world. To her downfall.

These experiences are related in the book Stupeur et tremblements (Fear and Trembling in English) – a book that I’ve read. It’s a sometimes uneasy mixture of humour and humiliation, with a lot of persistence thrown in. Amelie’s girl-crush on her immediate superior, the sadistic and resentful Fubuki, just makes things more sad and complicated.
In 2003, director Alain Corneau turned it into a film, also called Stupeur et tremblements, which will be shown at 4 p.m. Friday, May 10, 2013, at the Cinémathèque Québécoise. Sylvie Testud plays Amélie and Kaori Tsuji plays Fubuki.

Amélie’s boss, Fubuki, is convinced that Amélie is either very stupid, or dedicated to sabotage.

For some reviewers, Stupeur et tremblements (the film) seemed disrespectful to the Japanese. Maybe it is, or maybe those reviewers did not read or appreciate the book?
Perhaps it is just criticizing the unbending rules that Japanese office workers have to follow, and the obnoxious bosses that some of them work for?

Amélie is fascinated by the view of Tokyo that can be seen from the huge tower that she works in.

I don’t know, I’ll watch it and draw my own conclusions.
Below are excerpts from (and links to) some online reviews.

Jamie Russell, at bbc.co.uk: “. . . as a snapshot of the mind-numbing reality of working 9-5, Fear And Trembling captures the sheer misery of the office as a place of “torture, humiliation and contempt”.

According to G. Allen Johnson, of the San Francisco Chronicle, the film is “hilarious,” s/he also writes : “Amelie is played by the enigmatic actress Sylvie Testud (“Murderous Maids”), who won a French Cesar as best actress for her manic, pixieish performance. . .

“Testud, who took a crash course in Japanese and delivered her lines phonetically, powers this picture. She’s a delight; “Fear and Trembling” is the best office comedy since “Office Space.”

A.O. Scott, at the New York Times: “On a simple, anthropological level, “Fear and Trembling” illustrates a distinction between workplace cultures in Japan and the West that has long since been a truism in the business world, namely that Japanese companies value loyalty and obedience over individual initiative. When Amélie helps a mid-level executive who is not her boss with a report, both of them are punished and humiliated for violations of protocol, rather than rewarded for good work. Moments like this one seem well observed, though there are also times when the movie slips toward stereotyping.

“But Mr. Corneau, an eclectic director with a mildly perverse sensibility, turns the conflict of cultures into a psychodrama that is at once lighthearted and intense. . . As far as we know, neither Amélie nor any of her superiors and co-workers have a life outside Yumimoto, though they must go somewhere when the workday is over. But following them home would spoil the slightly artificial elegance of the story by introducing extraneous questions of psychology and motivation. This is a study of human behavior in captivity.”

“As such, it benefits enormously from the presence of Ms. Testud, who won a César for the role and whose defining trait is a barely controlled wildness.”

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.